Living With The Walking Dead

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A zombie anime? Super zombies? Robert Kirkman chats with us about the origins of his franchise.

By Richard George

Some 5.3 million people tuned in to the premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead - 8.3 if you count the two immediate replays. That's an impressive feat, one that almost guarantees a continuation of the epic zombie saga. It's hard to deny we're excited by the prospect. In the meantime, we want to bring you all of the latest on the show, including a deeper look through the eyes of one of the property's chief architects.

Though the show is primarily being helmed by producer/writer/director Frank Darabont and his team, at its core, the series is very much still the product of creator Robert Kirkman. In fact, just one episode in and we can tell the show's producers and writers are dedicated to making AMC's adaptation as faithful to the source comic books as possible.

We wanted to get a better perspective on the show, its creation and its roots in the comics, so we tracked down Kirkman. This is actually the first of many conversations we plan on having with the creator, so stay tuned to IGN for all things Walking Dead.

IGN Comics: I think a lot of people watching AMC's series might start to get curious about the origins of the franchise as well as the comic books in general. What prompted you to start writing The Walking Dead over five years ago? Where did the idea come from?

Robert Kirkman: Well, I always liked zombie movies. But my main complaint was that the endings were always kind of crappy. Not so crappy that they ruined the movie, but it was sort of this "Hey, we're out of time, now everyone's going to die!" or "Hey, we're out of time, these guys are going to die and these others are going to take off in a helicopter and we're not going to see where they go!" And I was always wondering where they go. There had, at that time, never been a zombie movie series that continued from one to the next with the same characters.

So I set out to do the zombie movie that never ends. I started a comic book series that would start where most zombie movies end and followed where these characters go, where they live, how they continue to exist in this apocalyptic world where they're trying to find food and shelter. How would living in this harsh world change them over time? So that was pretty much it!

IGN Comics: When you first created the comic book series did you ever suspect it might be made into a television series or movie? Did you think it would make that leap back to the format that inspired you?

Kirkman: It never really seemed like the thing to do. When people started talking to me about doing it as a movie, when I had been marketing it as the zombie movie that never ends… doing it as a movie didn't seem to make much sense. Putting it together as a comic book, I never thought it would be adapted because I just didn't see it as a movie, and it didn't seem like anyone would ever want to do that on TV. It was never really on my mind – I just wanted to do a cool comic book.

IGN Comics: Prior to AMC, and working with Frank [Darabont] and Gale [Anne Hurd], were there many offers to do the adaptation? Was the AMC option really the first that came along?

Kirkman: No, there were a few directors that I talked to… a couple people that were really interested. In some cases things just fell through and in other cases I just turned them down because it wasn't the right fit. I had some people wanting to do super-zombies and weird science fiction elements. At one point there was even talk about turning it into an anime. There were a lot of things going on.

But Frank was the first person to come along and say that he liked the fact that it was about the characters, that the zombies were just a backdrop. A lot of people would come in and say they loved the gore, that they could see this as a big action movie. When people would say that, I knew they didn't really get it. But Frank, thankfully, got the book from day one.

IGN Comics: So the characters and their emphasis and focus was the key element you wanted preserved in whatever form Walking Dead took?

Kirkman: Exactly. It's an emotional character drama at its core. It's a girly soap opera… with zombies. It's not an action movie. It's supposed to be a more subtle, slower… y'know?

IGN Comics: The differences between television and comics… when you were sitting down with Frank to adapt this, what did you realize you could do on TV that you couldn't in comics? It seems like ultimately you could do more in the comics… but it seems like there are still obvious, key differences?

Kirkman: Yeah, there's a lot actually. In comics, the pacing is decided by the reader. There are certain things you try to do as a comic book writer, but to a certain extent the reader is in complete control of how they move from panel to panel, how they read the dialogue, and that sort of stuff.

So it's kind of cool that the television show takes that away. There's much more control over the pace of it all. And then another thing I was most excited over was sound. Because we can't really do anything with sound in the comics – and movement. And those two things are huge. So the way the zombies move, the way they sound… there are those types of things you can play with in the show that I was never able to do in the comic book. I was really excited to see how that was handled.

IGN Comics: Has working on this first season affected the way you work on the comic book?

Kirkman: Thankfully no, not at all. If the same characters were in the book… I mean, another thing to note is that Rick Grimes, on issue #80 of the comic book, is almost nothing like the Rick in issue #1. And in the television show, Rick is like he was on issue #1. The comic book has progressed at such a quick pace, and the cast is so different because of all the deaths, that what I'm writing is very different from the television show.

So a lot of it doesn't really translate, which I'm excited about because I didn't really want to be influenced by the show. I don't really want anything in the comic book to change. I want it to be true to what it's always supposed to be. I wouldn't want to feel like I was being affected. That would frustrate me.